I have been studying Sberbank, which is Russia's largest bank, and which is partly owned by the Russian government.

What are some of the positives:

* Sberbank puts up impressive return on equity, growing from 10% in 2015 to 20% on yesterday's report.

* Few people know that the Russian consumer typically has no bank account. Only about 30% of the country's citizens trust banks. So the runway for growth in this very under-served population is huge.

* The bank seems to be very well managed.

* While trading at historically high valuations, it is still well under book value.

The main negative, and it is a big one: the earnings are in rubles. So an investment in Sberbank is a kind of leveraged Forex investment on Russian Rubles. Russian inflation was over 16% a year ago, but now it is down under 4%.

Questions on this:

1) What do others here think is the likely direction for Russian Ruble in the next 10 years? It seems to me that the commodity collapse when Oil went down really took everything out of the Ruble, and the Ruble is still trading on life support. So I don't see huge downside in the Ruble, as long as inflation stays tame.

2) What do others think is the long-term trend in Russia for inflation? Do they have any specific risks there?

3) Do others have any insight into Sberbank in particular?

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